From
The NY Times, Sept. 1, 2008
ST. PAUL — Just days after Gov. Sarah Palin was named as Senator John McCain’s running mate, Ms. Palin made an unlikely announcement of her own: Her daughter, Bristol, 17 and unmarried, was five months pregnant.
As Americans began learning this week about Ms. Palin — Alaskan hunter, hockey mom, former beauty queen, corruption fighter, and Governor they knew little about — they were also piecing together a portrait of her family life and all its complications.
Ms. Palin had once supported the candidate who ran against her own stepmother-in-law for mayor of her town, Wasilla. She was being investigated over claims that she had put pressure on an underling to fire her sister’s former husband from his job as a state trooper. And she had waited until she was seven months pregnant to make public news that she was expecting a fifth child this year, a pregnancy that was complicated by Down syndrome.
If anything, the still-unfolding story of Ms. Palin, 44, and her family eclipsed whatever other messages anyone may have hoped to send from the Republican National Convention here on Monday. It was a narrative worthy of a Lifetime television drama (which, perhaps fittingly, is sponsoring a string of events aimed at women here this week).
Like so many here, Ted Boyatt, 20, a delegate from Maryville, Tenn., seemed stunned by Ms. Palin’s announcement and its awkward timing.
“It seems like the whole script has just been knocked out of balance,” Mr. Boyatt said. “We had it on paper,” he said of the convention agenda, “and in the blink of an eye it all went out the window.”
The images of Ms. Palin’s smiling family — her 4-month-old son, Trig, in Bristol’s arms — had captivated many who watched Mr. McCain introducing Ms. Palin as his running mate on Friday, and who said they saw the tableau as a potential counterpoint to the young families of the Democratic ticket.
On Monday, Ms. Palin’s announcement of her daughter’s pregnancy was much of what people were murmuring about inside the halls here, at the cocktail hours, even along a route meant for protesters.
“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned,” read a statement issued on Monday by Ms. Palin and her husband, Todd. “We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support.”
The Palins said that Bristol, who was named for Bristol Bay, the salmon fishery, would marry a man they identified only as Levi, later confirmed to be Levi Johnston, a Wasilla resident. “Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family,” the statement said.
The Palins’ statement arrived after a flurry of rumors had made their way through the Internet over the weekend, growing and blooming, it seemed, by the minute.
Some claimed that Ms. Palin had not actually given birth to Trig, but that Bristol had, and that the family had covered it up. Various Web sites posted photographs of Ms. Palin in the months leading up to his birth this year, and debated whether her physique might have been too trim for her stage of pregnancy. The McCain campaign said Ms. Palin announced Bristol’s pregnancy to stop the swirl of rumors.
Ms. Palin’s own pregnancy took Alaska by surprise this year. Even those who worked for her in the governor’s office said they were surprised. Her announcement, in March, was reported in The Anchorage Daily News, which noted at the time that Ms. Palin “simply doesn’t look pregnant.”
Friends said that Ms. Palin, a conservative Protestant and a member since 2006 of Feminists for Life, an anti-abortion group, knew when she was pregnant with Trig (said to be a Norse name for strength) that he had Down syndrome — a fact that has, in some ways, sealed Ms. Palin’s support among anti-abortion advocates and others.
“The governor sent a personal letter out to her friends and let us all know she was pregnant and that Trig would be a special baby in many ways,” said Kristan Cole, one of Ms. Palin’s closest friends in Wasilla, the town where Ms. Palin had served as mayor.
In 2002, when Ms. Palin was completing her second and final term as mayor, her husband’s stepmother, Faye Palin, began campaigning to succeed her. Faye Palin, though, favored abortion rights, people who recalled the race said, and Ms. Palin sided instead with Dianne M. Keller, a City Council member who won the race and remains mayor there today.
“I said, ‘Faye, my God, what is Thanksgiving going to be like at your house?’ ” said Michelle Church, a member of the borough government that includes Wasilla. “She was just like, ‘Well, I just won’t say anything.’ ”
Faye Palin declined a request for an interview.
Another chapter of the Palins’ personal life turned public this year when the State Legislature called for an investigation into whether Ms. Palin had forced a former state public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, into resigning. Mr. Monegan has said he felt pressure from Ms. Palin’s administration and her husband to fire Mike Wooten, a state trooper who was going through an acrimonious custody battle with Ms. Palin’s sister, Molly McCann.
And on Monday, more details seemed to be spilling out. McCain campaign officials first confirmed to the Christian Broadcasting Network on Monday that Todd Palin had pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated in 1986; he had been pulled over, they said, in Dillingham, Alaska, while driving a pickup truck with friends. Mr. Palin has several other minor traffic violations, records show. He pleaded no contest to illegally operating an off-road vehicle in a game refuge in 2002, and that year was charged with failing to stop for a red light.
The Palins eloped on Aug. 29, 1988, and their first son, Track, was born eight months later, a fact that Maria Comella of the McCain campaign, declined to elaborate on. “They were high school sweethearts who got married and ended up having five beautiful children together,” Ms. Comella said.
In Ms. Palin’s circle in Alaska, some had heard of Bristol’s pregnancy before the public announcement on Monday. Janet Kincaid, Ms. Palin’s longtime friend and political ally, heard a few weeks ago. A man who was doing some work for her, she said, knows the baby’s father and told her. Then she heard it from others.
“I just thought, poor Sarah,” said Mrs. Kincaid, who has 28 grandchildren and 6 children. “There is always one that knocks the socks off of you and keeps you humble just when you think you’re the greatest mom.”
Family friends said the couple has had some discipline problems with Track, who recently joined the Army. “Track was a big hockey star, and when you’re a jock in high school there’s a certain amount of ego and problems that goes with that,” Mrs. Kincaid said. “But that’s normal. They are a normal American family with all the joys and problems.”
Other friends cautioned against judging the Palins as parents.
“They hold the kids pretty tight,” said Chuck Francis Baird, 52, a competitive snow machine racer who has known Mr. Palin for years. “They just don’t let the kids run wild, that’s for sure. They’re not trashy people.”
